Final Project
MAIN PROBLEM: ANCIENT ROME DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH TAX MONEY TO FIX PUBLIC WORKS OR PAY FOR THINGS LIKE A POLIC FORCE.
A
The government welfare system was taking out of the tax money because so many Romans were signing up for it.
The military cost a lot to run and fight in wars.
-When the government minted more coins to help pay for the loss of tax money inflation occurred.
Since Rome wanted and needed as much money as they could get they hired tax farmers. The tax farmers had a large fee to pay to become a tax farmer but many of them knew they could make a profit but since there were no limits to how much they could charge they would would charge large amounts whcih led to more slaves because they couldn't pay the tax rates.
Many people sold themselves into slavery to get out of paying the taxes because they were so high.
There were many slaves in Ancient Rome who didn't have to pay taxes.
The invading Barbaric tribes were costly to defend off and they were stealing denerii from Rome so they had even less money.
The government had to keep the mobs of poor people happy so they had to use as lot of tax money to pay for the free food ration and free entertainment.
Since Rome controlled all of the medditeranian world, they had to make more military forces to protect their large territory which cost a lot of tax money.
The government had to pay for legionnaires salaries and war equiptment.
Tax farmers collected taxes for the government.
"A Note on the collatio glebalis," by S. J. B. Barnish. Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Vol. 38, No. 2 (2nd Qtr., 1989), pp. 254-256
TAX PROBLEMS TODAY
The government needs more tax money than is coming in by citizens. To stop this they raise taxs to the point where families can no longer afford it.
The national dept is very high.The national spending of tax money is creating a deficit because the government is spending faster than the raising of our taxes can compensate for. The taxes are high in general.Taxes are growing at a faster rate than people's salary raises/ cost of living raises are, which causes a hardship on American families because then there is less money for housing, food, etc. The US doesn't have enough tax money to pay off the national dept. let alone this years spending plans. To afford everything(government spendings for this year and national dept.)we need $16.5 trillion dollars which we can't even come close to paying if we raise taxes and collect revenues.When the government prints more money to help pay off dept. and to make up for the tax money we need to come in, inflation occurs then we are in a bigger problem then we were in before.
US today problems MAJOR PROBLEM: TAXES ARE TOO HIGH TO AFFORD AND WE DONT HAVE ENOUGH TAXES TO PAY OFF NATIONAL DEPT OR TO PAY FOR THE GOVERNMENTS SPENDIN OF IT. "A Note on the collatio glebalis," by S. J. B. Barnish. Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Vol. 38, No. 2 (2nd Qtr., 1989), pp. 254-256. Dear Cameron Hawkins,
I am a 7th grader at Nagel middle school. I have been researching Ancient Roman taxes. My topic is about not having enough tax money to pay for public works. I know that Rome didn't have enough money to pay for things like a police force and that a lot of their tax money was going to paying for the welfare system. I was wondering if you could help me out by answering I few questions about the Ancient Roman welfare system.
1. On average, how much did it cost to keep one citizen on the welfare system?
2. At the fall of Rome, approximately how many people were on the welfare system?
3. Did the government take taxes out of the citizens "paychecks"? If so, did that amount change at different times?
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Maddy O'Connor Dear Maddy, Thanks for your email. I'll do my best to address some of your questions, but please bear in mind that the answers are all rather complicated, and I can't do more here than point you in the rough direction of more satisfying answers.
First of all, it's important to recognize that the Romans did NOT have a welfare system. The closest thing they had was a system of public food distribution in Rome itself (and later on in Constantinople); initially these distributions consisted of grain, but later they consisted of bread and other staples. In addition to that, emperors of course sponsored things like public buildings and games, partly from public revenues, and partly from their own vast fortunes.
The food distributed by the Roman state was handed out to a limited number of citizens (maybe 200,000 in each of these two cities) who qualified for the privilege -- not necessarily because of poverty, but because of citizenship. That may seem like a lot, but in an empire inhabited by 50 million people or so, it represents at most only 1% of the population.
It's hard to talk about the costs of all of this, since much of the food being distributed came from taxation in kind (in other words, the government collected a certain percentage of the grain that was produced in the empire as tax, and used that for the food distributions). Plus, we know far less about costs and revenues than we would like to, since official records that would provide those numbers did not survive. So, we have to guess about a lot of the figures involved.
Here's an example of the kinds of rough guesses historians have made. In the second century AD, though, the value of the grain that was disbursed in Rome by the government was probably something like 36 million sesterces. Overall, however, the Roman government in this period probably spent a total of somewhere between 650 and 900 million sesterces per year. Most of this went to the army, which likely cost about 480 million sesterces to maintain every year; much of the remainder was probably used to support the expenses of the emperor and the imperial household. This means that what the government spent on food handouts was about 10% of what it spent on the army, so these weren't really a major element in the state budget. And while the costs of food distributions may have increased in the late period (in the fourth and fifth centuries), they probably didn't increase so much that the basic relationship between the amount spent on the army and the amount spent on food distributions changed in any radical way.
Lastly, the Roman government collected taxes in a bunch of different ways, but not really by taxing people's earnings in any direct sense. The main tax was always a tax on land, and there were other direct taxes on things like houses and slaves, and in many parts of the empire people paid a poll tax. Then, there were indirect taxes, like customs duties and so on. How heavy the tax burden was is difficult to sort out, but it was probably not very high -- most people guess somewhere in the range of 10% of the annual GDP of the empire, or possibly a little lower.
I hope that this helps a little. Books that might give you further information include:
Chester G. Starr, "The Roman Empire," especially pages 75-81 and 86-89.
Peter Garnsey and Richard Saller, "The Roman Empire," pages 83-103.
Paul Erdkamp, "The Grain Market in the Roman Empire," pages 206-316.
MAIN PROBLEM: ANCIENT ROME DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH TAX MONEY TO FIX PUBLIC WORKS OR PAY FOR THINGS LIKE A POLIC FORCE.
A
The government welfare system was taking out of the tax money because so many Romans were signing up for it.
The military cost a lot to run and fight in wars.
-When the government minted more coins to help pay for the loss of tax money inflation occurred.
Since Rome wanted and needed as much money as they could get they hired tax farmers. The tax farmers had a large fee to pay to become a tax farmer but many of them knew they could make a profit but since there were no limits to how much they could charge they would would charge large amounts whcih led to more slaves because they couldn't pay the tax rates.
Many people sold themselves into slavery to get out of paying the taxes because they were so high.
There were many slaves in Ancient Rome who didn't have to pay taxes.
The invading Barbaric tribes were costly to defend off and they were stealing denerii from Rome so they had even less money.
The government had to keep the mobs of poor people happy so they had to use as lot of tax money to pay for the free food ration and free entertainment.
Since Rome controlled all of the medditeranian world, they had to make more military forces to protect their large territory which cost a lot of tax money.
The government had to pay for legionnaires salaries and war equiptment.
Tax farmers collected taxes for the government.
"A Note on the collatio glebalis," by S. J. B. Barnish. Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Vol. 38, No. 2 (2nd Qtr., 1989), pp. 254-256
TAX PROBLEMS TODAY
The government needs more tax money than is coming in by citizens. To stop this they raise taxs to the point where families can no longer afford it.
The national dept is very high.The national spending of tax money is creating a deficit because the government is spending faster than the raising of our taxes can compensate for. The taxes are high in general.Taxes are growing at a faster rate than people's salary raises/ cost of living raises are, which causes a hardship on American families because then there is less money for housing, food, etc. The US doesn't have enough tax money to pay off the national dept. let alone this years spending plans. To afford everything(government spendings for this year and national dept.)we need $16.5 trillion dollars which we can't even come close to paying if we raise taxes and collect revenues.When the government prints more money to help pay off dept. and to make up for the tax money we need to come in, inflation occurs then we are in a bigger problem then we were in before.
US today problems MAJOR PROBLEM: TAXES ARE TOO HIGH TO AFFORD AND WE DONT HAVE ENOUGH TAXES TO PAY OFF NATIONAL DEPT OR TO PAY FOR THE GOVERNMENTS SPENDIN OF IT.
"A Note on the collatio glebalis," by S. J. B. Barnish. Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Vol. 38, No. 2 (2nd Qtr., 1989), pp. 254-256.
Dear Cameron Hawkins,
I am a 7th grader at Nagel middle school. I have been researching Ancient Roman taxes. My topic is about not having enough tax money to pay for public works. I know that Rome didn't have enough money to pay for things like a police force and that a lot of their tax money was going to paying for the welfare system. I was wondering if you could help me out by answering I few questions about the Ancient Roman welfare system.
1. On average, how much did it cost to keep one citizen on the welfare system?
2. At the fall of Rome, approximately how many people were on the welfare system?
3. Did the government take taxes out of the citizens "paychecks"? If so, did that amount change at different times?
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Maddy O'Connor
Dear Maddy,
Thanks for your email. I'll do my best to address some of your questions, but please bear in mind that the answers are all rather complicated, and I can't do more here than point you in the rough direction of more satisfying answers.
First of all, it's important to recognize that the Romans did NOT have a welfare system. The closest thing they had was a system of public food distribution in Rome itself (and later on in Constantinople); initially these distributions consisted of grain, but later they consisted of bread and other staples. In addition to that, emperors of course sponsored things like public buildings and games, partly from public revenues, and partly from their own vast fortunes.
The food distributed by the Roman state was handed out to a limited number of citizens (maybe 200,000 in each of these two cities) who qualified for the privilege -- not necessarily because of poverty, but because of citizenship. That may seem like a lot, but in an empire inhabited by 50 million people or so, it represents at most only 1% of the population.
It's hard to talk about the costs of all of this, since much of the food being distributed came from taxation in kind (in other words, the government collected a certain percentage of the grain that was produced in the empire as tax, and used that for the food distributions). Plus, we know far less about costs and revenues than we would like to, since official records that would provide those numbers did not survive. So, we have to guess about a lot of the figures involved.
Here's an example of the kinds of rough guesses historians have made. In the second century AD, though, the value of the grain that was disbursed in Rome by the government was probably something like 36 million sesterces. Overall, however, the Roman government in this period probably spent a total of somewhere between 650 and 900 million sesterces per year. Most of this went to the army, which likely cost about 480 million sesterces to maintain every year; much of the remainder was probably used to support the expenses of the emperor and the imperial household. This means that what the government spent on food handouts was about 10% of what it spent on the army, so these weren't really a major element in the state budget. And while the costs of food distributions may have increased in the late period (in the fourth and fifth centuries), they probably didn't increase so much that the basic relationship between the amount spent on the army and the amount spent on food distributions changed in any radical way.
Lastly, the Roman government collected taxes in a bunch of different ways, but not really by taxing people's earnings in any direct sense. The main tax was always a tax on land, and there were other direct taxes on things like houses and slaves, and in many parts of the empire people paid a poll tax. Then, there were indirect taxes, like customs duties and so on. How heavy the tax burden was is difficult to sort out, but it was probably not very high -- most people guess somewhere in the range of 10% of the annual GDP of the empire, or possibly a little lower.
I hope that this helps a little. Books that might give you further information include:
Chester G. Starr, "The Roman Empire," especially pages 75-81 and 86-89.
Peter Garnsey and Richard Saller, "The Roman Empire," pages 83-103.
Paul Erdkamp, "The Grain Market in the Roman Empire," pages 206-316.
Cam.